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In a general PoS system like you describe, what prevents a bistable situation from emerging? If there is any significant level of cheating, then running a slash
by addaon 4y ago
In a general PoS system like you describe, what prevents a bistable situation from emerging? If there is any significant level of cheating, then running a slasher is profitable, which makes cheating very unprofitable, driving it to zero. But in the absence of cheating, what's the motivation to develop, maintain, test, and operate a slasher node? Isn't this prone to long periods of time with negligible cheating where all the slashers die out, followed by one big malicious attack that isn't caught promptly?
- immibis 4y agoPossibly. You could even do this if the slashers were active. Just start up your attack instantaneously in between two blocks. Prior to the attack, nobody is cheating. After the attack, nobody is accepting evidence of cheating. The whole cryptocurrency thing feels like a bit of a metastable equilibrium, but nobody's figured out anything better. Arguably even government-controlled fiat money is not much better - if >50% of the population doesn't like the rules, they will change them - we may be seeing the beginning of this right now, with a lot of people getting dissatisfied with half their income going to the black hole known as "landlords" who own the rights to take your income without producing any value whatsoever. It might just lead to everyone abandoning your cryptocurrency and using a different one. Since you had to have >50% of the cryptocurrency in order to conduct the attack, you did lose a substantial amount of real-world value (billions or trillions of $) when everyone else stopped using your cryptocurrency. It's pretty much analogous to if a majority of PoW miners decide to "go their own way" and make a chain where nobody else is invited. What happens then?